Tuesday Reads

Good Morning!! It’s back to work and back to school day. Let’s see what’s happening out there in the world.

It looks like Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign is in disarray. From the NYT:

Ed Rollins, the veteran campaign operative who helped engineer an Iowa straw poll victory for Representative Michele Bachmann this summer, has stepped down from running the day-to-day operations of her presidential campaign, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Bachmann said Monday night.

A campaign spokesman said Rollins is stepping down because of health reasons, but that sounds like a cover story, because Rollins’ second in command, David Polyansky is also leaving, and

The change in roles for Mr. Rollins came on a day he was quoted in The Washington Post as expressing pessimism about Mrs. Bachmann’s campaign. “The Perry-Romney race is now the story, with us the third candidate,” Mr. Rollins said.

We may have dodged a bullet, but now Rick Perry may get stronger. Let’s hope he flops at the upcoming Republican debate. Maybe he’ll pray for rain on stage or something.

Fox News staffers were up to ther old tricks today. They doctored a video of Teamsters president James Hoffa to make it look like he was calling for violence against tea partiers.

Right-wing bloggers misled by dishonest Fox News video editing are attacking Teamsters President James Hoffa, Jr. for supposedly urging violence against Tea Party activists during a Labor Day speech. Conservatives are also attacking President Obama, who appeared at the event, for “sanctioning violence against fellow Americans” by failing to denounce Hoffa. But fuller context included in other Fox segments makes clear that Hoffa wasn’t calling for violence but was actually urging the crowd to vote out Republican members of Congress.

During the segment that the bloggers have latched onto, Fox edited out the bolded portion of Hoffa’s comments:

HOFFA: Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!

In an initial report on Hoffa’s speech at 1 p.m. on Fox News, Ed Henry reported that Hoffa said that “we’ll remember in November who’s with the working people” and “said of the Tea Party and of Republicans, ‘let’s take these sons of bitches out.'”

Here we are with around 15% real unemployment in this country, and the media is trying to kill unions with game playing. And it’s not just Fox News doing it either.

Hoffa says he has “no regrets.”

Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box.

Hoffa said he’d say the exact same words all over again.

“I would because I believe it,” he said. “They’ve declared war on us. We didn’t declare war on them, they declared war on us. We’re fighting back. The question is, who started the war?”

The UK Guardian reports that the a number of activists are criticizing President Obama for continuing Bush policies that violate Americans’ civil rights. Among the critics is Michael Ratner, former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

On becoming president in January 2009, Obama promised to close Guantánamo Bay within a year. He did order an end to waterboarding but Guantánamo remains open and almost all the rest of the Bush era anti-terrorism apparatus, from the Patriot Act through to increased surveillance is still in place.

Measures once considered only for emergency use are being consolidated.

“I did not like it when the violations of rights were temporary but now, because of Obama going along with the changes, they are becoming a permanent fixture of our legal landscape,” said Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has been battling since the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s.

Ratner, who was among the first, small group of lawyers to fight on behalf of the Guantánamo detainees, said Obama had the chance to close Guantánamo but became weak-kneed about it. “Indefinite detention, restrictions on habeas corpus, rendition, all these continue under Obama. We still have military commissions under Obama.”

He added: “All the restrictions on government surveillance and spying that we fought for and won in the 1970s, are gone. We are back to square one. There are no restrictions on the FBI. None. They are targeting Muslims in particular. One’s religion has become a key criteria for surveillance.”

Oddly, I have not seen this story reported in U.S. newspapers yet. I’m sure that’s just an oversight /snark

Meanwhile, Great Britain is ramping up their own “security” apparatus in response the the recent rioting there. Convicted rioters are getting longer sentences than normal and David Cameron is planning to show the sentencing of rioters on television!

Judges’ sentencing of offenders is to be televised under plans to be unveiled by the prime minister shortly, the Guardian has learned.

David Cameron is expected to make his announcement in a long-awaited crime speech, expediting the agenda even though a Ministry of Justice consultation with the judiciary into the matter has not yet begun. It is not yet known how many courts will be televised.

As part of his push for transparency in public services, Cameron will give the go-ahead to the televising of judicial verdicts but it is thought this will critically not include the process of the trial leading up to the verdict, protecting witnesses from exposure to publicity. The shift towards the televising of court proceedings has always been hampered by the spectre of OJ Simpson’s trial in the US which degenerated into prime-time entertainment.

I’m sure that will solve the unemployment problem. Of course it costs more in the long run to house people in prisons than to give them a hand up, but who cares? Got to punish dissent or the poor might get even more uppity.

In New York City they can’t seem to convict rapists, but the NYPD today managed to throw a Black city councilman and another man to the pavement and handcuff them for trying to join other officials at an event at the Brooklyn Museum that was part of West Indian Day.

The councilman, Jumaane D. Williams, was not charged with a crime, nor was the aide, Kirsten John Foy, Mr. De Blasio’s community affairs director….

Mr. Williams and Mr. Foy were trying to walk from Grand Army Plaza to a post-parade event at the Brooklyn Museum, using a sidewalk that the police had blocked. According to Mr. [Bill] de Blasio [a “public advocate”], who said he had spoken to Mr. Foy about the episode, they had been given permission to use the sidewalk by a police officer wearing the kind of white shirt usually worn by an officer of high rank.

But as the two men continued walking down the sidewalk, they found themselves surrounded by uniformed police officers stationed farther along.

“Jumaane was wearing a council member’s pin, they were trying to explain who they were, but the officers weren’t listening,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview.

Mr. de Blasio said that Mr. Williams began to argue with the officers and that at some point, he and Mr. Foy were both thrown to the ground and handcuffed. They were taken to the Union Temple, a synagogue on Eastern Parkway, where Mr. de Blasio said he went after getting the call. There, Mr. de Blasio said, he spoke to a police commander, who released Mr. Williams and Mr. Foy after about 30 minutes without filing charges.

From reading the article, I get the feeling this is going to cause some problems for the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg. Already the police commissioner has met with the two men and called for an investigation. Some are wondering if the race of the men was involved in the incident. Ya think?

According the LA Times, Wall Street is “bracing for losses” tomorrow following the horrible U.S. jobs report.

Any troubles in the world’s largest economy cast a long shadow over the markets, and a report Friday that the U.S. economy failed to add any new jobs in August caused European and Asian stock markets to sink sharply Monday.

That jobs figure was far below economists’ already tepid expectations for 93,000 new U.S. jobs and renewed concerns that the U.S. recovery is not only slowing but actually unwinding. U.S. hiring figures for June and July were also revised lower, adding to the gloom.

The full effect of the jobs report will hit U.S. markets Tuesday because trading was closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

Apparently everyone is pinning their hopes on Obama’s Greatest Jobs Speech Evah on Thursday. I wonder what will happen to the market after the speech turns out to be a great big nothingburger?

I wish I had some better news for you, but that’s all I could find. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Late Night Open Thread: Rice University Marching Band Makes Fun of Governor Goodhair

Via Raw Story, It seems that Rice University students, who tend to be heavily focused on their studies tend to look down on those who attend Texas A&M, like Governor Rick Perry.

Now Rice’s Marching Owl Band has taken a shot of their own at Perry’s intelligence, telling a stadium full of cheering spectators, “The next time you go to the polls, ask yourself, ‘Is your candidate smarter than an Aggie?’”

(See the video above.)

Just how dumb is Rick Perry? HuffPo has published his college transcript as a public service.

A source in Texas passed The Huffington Post Perry’s transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University. The future politician did not distinguish himself much in the classroom. While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so. He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses — earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics. Perry got a C in gym.

Perry also did poorly on classes within his animal science major. In fall semester 1970, he received a D in veterinary anatomy, a F in a second course on organic chemistry and a C in animal breeding. He did get an A in world military systems and “Improv. of Learning” — his only two As while at A&M.

“A&M wasn’t exactly Harvard on the Brazos River,” recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post. “This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke.”

Here’s the transcript:

Perry made up for his poor academic performance by being so popular that the was elected cheerleader two times. Apparently that’s a huge honor at Texas Aggie.